Malaysian Arts

During this week's lecture, I have learnt many new vocabularies and some facts that I misunderstood before this.

#1 – Dance defines as using the body to tell a story within a space and it is not just about memorising steps.

#2 – Ephemeral means something that temporary, eg: performing art.

#3 – Xenophobia means intense dislike or fear of foreigners or strangers.

#4 – Chilayu is not only the mixture of Chinese and Melayu, but also include Chinese adapt Malay culture and Chinese adopted by Malay family.

#5 – the word ‘BOTAK’ of the criminal Botak Chin does not mean bald but the abbreviation of ‘Bantu Orang Tak Ada Kerja’.

One of the arts that shown to us that impressed me so much is the dissection of animals by Damien Hirst. When mention about dissection of animals, what we normally think of are scientists and science labs. However, unexpectedly it is a form of art and it is not easy to handle it like others.

Questions for this week:

What is Malaysian art?

To me, Malaysian art is any art form that are Malaysia based, which means any arts related to Malaysia. Or maybe created by Malaysian as well? So i think those graffiti on the wall especially in KL area are also considered as Malaysian art.

Is it the responsibilities of a Malaysian artist to create Malaysian art?

In my opinion, it's Malaysian artist's responsibilities to create Malaysia art. If they don’t create Malaysian art, who else would bear the responsibility to create it? Just same as, if you don’t do you own things, who else going to do it for you? Moreover, as Malaysian artists, they should know more about Malaysia and therefore, they can create arts that are appropriate and suitable than other artists from other countries.

What event is so significant you think we should feature in Malaysian art work?

Anything, everything. Creativity has no limitation.

But of course, events that related to Malaysia or happen in Malaysia. Any events that happened in Malaysia are so memorable, and they somehow create certain identities to Malaysia.